In my email this week

Sometimes I wonder why, but at some point in time, I've signed up to get emails about ages and stages. In me inbox this week, I found one about K:

By 30 months, your child can name a few body parts, some colors, and even a friend or two.

I read this in bewilderment. K can name pretty much all the body parts from her pinky toe to her belly button to her eyebrow and forehead. She knows the colors and even recognizes most of them with accuracy. She knows the names of her friends and often those of the friend's parent(s).

As I read, I wondered if this is all we should be expecting of our kids this age. Then I remembered.....ah, she's a second child. That's why!

B can often be found teaching K something that she learned in preschool or from a friend. They are most often together, so of course K will be learning whatever B is doing. It's amazing, really.

When I mentioned this email to my mother-in-law, a preschool teacher/administrator in her younger years, she absolutely agreed with me. She thought that K's verbal skills were about that of a 3 1/2 year old rather than a 2 1/2 year old.

So, there I was feeling all proud of myself for raising such exceptionally intelligent children. Maybe I should have stopped at exceptional.....

Yesterday, in the span of 1/2 hour, K managed to pour half a bottle of nail polish on the floor, spill a bowl full of water onto the bathroom floor and cover herself in my makeup. Before I got the first mess cleaned up she was on to the next one. (Unfortunately, I didn't get pictures of any of them. I might find them funny down the road.)

When I told her "no, you can't play with mommy's makeup" and I wiped the powder off her face (and her hair and her shirt and the floor), she burst into tears and threw a big ol' hissy fit.

Yep, I guess she is just 2 1/2 after all!